I’m exhausted! I’ve been on a major cleaning and organizing spree lately. I’ve spent the last four days cleaning various areas of my house.

Actually I haven’t just been cleaning. I’ve been “purging” my house of clutter! Earlier today my husband and took four bags of old clothes to a donation area. We also dropped off a lot of our old electronics at a recycling station. We had a very old computer, computer monitor, two printers, a scanner and several mouses and so on that we’d needed to get rid of forever. I’m so happy that all that stuff is gone now.

Friday I spent about 8 hours cleaning under two beds in our spare rooms (we have a small house with only TWO real closets so space under the bed IS storage space!), sweeping, dusting and mopping on the main and upper floors of our house.

Saturday I cleaned out the big closet in our smallest spare room and completely cleaned the room. By this I mean I went through all of the drawers and threw out a lot of junk! I also turned on the very old computer and removed all of the old personal files since I knew we’d be getting rid of the computer. I tried to format the hard drive but it wouldn’t work. (we eventually took the hard drive out and ran a magnet over it to try to destroy the data, and we also smashed the hard drive – just to be on the safe side. LOL) Then I went into the master bedroom and went through the three storage boxes I have under the bed. This started my clothes donation pile. I then started going through the clothes drawers and organizing them. All in all I think I cleaned for about ten hours on Saturday. I was so busy I even forgot to take my medicines for most of the day.

By Saturday night my leg muscles were hurting. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to move on Sunday and I planed to just rest on Sunday. I mean, I’d been working pretty hard and I deserved a break, right? .. somehow my brain didn’t feel the same way come Sunday … For some reason I decided that the bathroom simply had to be cleaned. Totally cleaned. I mean I cleaned everything – the tub, the walls, the ceiling, hand scrubbed the tiles on the floor trying to make the grout white again … yeah .. I cleaned the bathroom for about 7 hours!

I don’t know why I’m on this cleaning frenzy other than I really have to get the house organized. There are a lot of changes coming up in my life in the near future and organizing and decluttering the house is part of what I need to do to get ready for what’s going to be happening.

Anyway … you’d think that at least I would have taken a break today wouldn’t you? Nope .. I ended up cleaning out the area under my kitchen sink, and then going into the basement and cleaning one small area. I went through some drawers down stairs. I was actually looking for something but ended up going through the whole set of drawers and cleaning them out. It needed to be done. It’s amazing the papers and clutter we hung on to! As I’ve cleaned I’ve found old shopping lists, old Christmas cards, flyers for things like food allergies austin or shopping deals, old business cards I printed out for my former business and for my websites … it just goes on and on. I don’t need any of that stuff anymore.

I have a feeling the decluttering has only just begun. I think that once I’ve gone over the whole house I’ll need to go over it again and get rid of more stuff. We have a LOT of stuff.

Do you ever get on a cleaning and organizing trend like I have in the last few days and find that you just can’t stop until you’ve finished the area you’re working on? Well one good thing about my busy Friday to Sunday was that I had the best, deepest sleep last night that I’ve had in months! I hope that I can sleep that well again tonight.

My pretty little Pontiac has a big ding in the front bumper now. I’m not happy … no not happy at all.

My husband was out shopping this afternoon and he parked in an odd parking spot that had a lamp post at the outer (rather than inner) edge of the parking spot so when he was backing out of the parking spot the front drivers side bumper hit the lamp post and smashed in.

This was the first accident my husband has ever been in and man … did it ever upset him. He’s still feeling unsettled. BTW I’ve never had a car accident either – I know I’d be just as upset if it had happened to me.

I’m upset because our car is damaged, but I’m glad that the accident happened in a parking lot. I mean – if you’re going to have a car accident I guess it’s best to have one at low speed in a parking lot and hit a lamp post and not another car or a person, right?

At first my husband thought he’d have to call for a tow truck to have the car towed to a garage since the car looked undriveable … but he worked at it and ended up pulling out the front drivers side wheel well which was making the bumper bulge out and that made the car drivable again.

It looks like we’re going to have to replace the front drivers side wheel well and the front bumper. I have no idea how much that will cost, but I’m guessing that it will be more than $1000. I’m not looking forward to this repair bill!

In other news I had my own accident. I slipped in a mall on Friday and now my back is sore. That’s why I wasn’t out with my husband today. I wish they’d had non skid flooring where I fell! Ah .. it might not have helped though anyway … my back is so bad these days that any little jar seems to set it off. Hopefully my back is feeling a little better in the next few days .. better than our car.

I’m disappointed today. As I said in my previous posts I threw my back out again and it’s really aching.

Unfortunately this means that I probably can’t do something tomorrow that I’ve been looking forward to for about a week.

I was invited to go to the Google Canada offices tomorrow for lunch to discuss my experiences with Adsense and possibly give some suggestions as to how they could make it better.

I was lucky enough to have been invited to the first Canada Google Partner day last October and I was surprised to have been invited to what sounded like a smaller and possibly even more informal gathering at Google so soon (or at all!).

I really want to go, but I don’t think that I can sit for very long with my back the way it is. Hmmm maybe they’d let me lie on the floor? LOL Nah, not going to do that!

Instead of going to Google Canada tomorrow I guess I’ll spend some time working on my websites and blogs and perhaps start searching for unique gifts for dad since Father’s day is coming up soon.

Hopefully I’ll get another invite to Google sometime in the future. Perhaps they’ll have another Partner day this fall? Sigh …

I’ll bet that some of you have been wondering where I disappeared to these last two weeks. Well, I can’t say that I went far! I guess I’ve been in the garden – trimming, tidying and planting, planting, planting!

Oh and recovering from each and every garden outing for a day or two! My back is acting up again and all the bending involved with taking care of a garden is just aggravating things.

It’s so bad today that I can barely get up and walk around. I dreaded taking the dog out a few times today because she tends to pull on the leash … and that makes my back scream!

At least the garden looks fantastic. Almost all of our roses (60 + rose bushes) are in bloom. The lavender is also starting to bloom as is one of our Peony plants and several of our Clematis. Everything looks great.

Our vegetables (well most of them) are planted as well, and with all the hot weather we’ve been having I expect to be eating a lot of salads and using several tomatoes in our meals sometime soon.

Now I have to get to work and do a search for a good price on some Branson tickets for the end of July. Chris’ brother wants to meet us there for a family get together. So we’ll see what I can find.

Since we had fantastic weather here in Toronto (seriously 25 C (77 F) is HOT for April here!) I spent a lot of time outside in my garden. My husband and I started tidying up the garden beds on Thursday evening when he came home from work and we continued working on the garden on Friday and Saturday.

14 yard waste bags later and we’re done!

Yes you read that correctly … we managed to collect 14 bags of leaves and uh rose branch trimmings. Yes it’s a little early to trim the roses, but most of them actually have leaf buds or actual leaves now … so I think it’s ok. LOL

My back is done too. Each evening I had to lie down with a heating pad to ease the spasms and ache in my lower back and hips. Luckily my back is a bit better today, but I sure did a number on it.

I’m sure not getting enough sleep over the weekend didn’t help either. My bedside lamp, a really nice one from Ikea that I’ve been using for a few years started humming or buzzing. Why do Ikea lamps buzz? Well, it’s not the actual lamp, it’s the attachment near the end of the plug that buzzes. Grrrr

It bothered me enough last night that I went looking for new lamps online and I found some wall scones at Hinkley lighting that might work if we place them on the wall on either side of the bed. That way my husband will finally have his own light. Not that he needs one … he tends to fall asleep most nights as soon as his head hits the pillow and if he’s not asleep in 5 minutes he thinks he has insomnia. LOL

Anyway … the good weather is over for a few days. We’re back to closer to normal temps and it’s raining raining raining oh and gloomy. Oh well it’s good for my garden (which has plants coming up that I don’t normally see until May!) and it will give my back a few days to get better before the garden lures me out there again.

Did you have a good Easter weekend too? Was the weather great or what?